What is Winning? Does Charlie Sheen Know? Do You?

Most of us (save all the people enabling him through ticket purchases) have come to chuckle or cry when we hear Charlie Sheen describe his life as winning. We look at his starved frame and erratic behavior and know that whatever we see is certainly not winning.

And yet for most in our culture there is a moment of crisis. Especially for most of the men of our culture, what Charlie has is what they have viewed as winning for so long. Success. Fame. Money. Homes. Cars. Alcohol. Parties. Girls. These are the things most men (and many women) chase after in our day. Charlie’s life reads as the bucket list of the modern man.

And yet, modern media is revealing to us the lie that has been whispered into our ears by the evil one. Winning has to be something other than what we are sold in song and billboard.

What Charlie has is not winning, but vanity. What most of the world is chasing after is not winning, but vanity.

Ecclesiastes 1:14-15 – “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.”

What is crooked can not be made straight. I challenge our culture today. If you look at Charlie and see anything but winning, reexamine your own goals and desires. Are you chasing what he chased and achieved expecting winning? It will not happen. Winning is not what you thought it was.

Ecclesiastes 3:18 – “I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.”

What we desire in and of ourselves is not winning. It is Losing –capital L. Winning is fearing God.

Ecclesiastes 5:7 – “For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.”